31 October 2008

The leaders of three African trading blocs on Wednesday agreed to create a free trade zone of 26 countries with a GDP of an estimated $624bn (£382.9bn).

It is hoped the deal will ease access to markets within the region and end problems arising from the fact several countries belong to multiple groups.

The deal also aims to strengthen the bloc's bargaining power when negotiating international deals.

Analysts say the agreement will help intra-regional trade and boost growth.

The three blocs which struck the deal were the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the East African Community (EAC) and the the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa).

"The greatest enemy of Africa, the greatest source of weakness has been disunity and a low level of political and economic integration," said Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni at a meeting with the heads of state who chair the three trade blocs.

The agreement will also lend its backing to joint infrastructure and energy projects in the zone.

Redressing imbalance

Six heads of state from 26 countries in Comesa, SADC and the EAC attended the meeting in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, to sign the agreement.

Many of the leaders and representatives consider the new pact a way of giving Africa a greater voice on the world stage.

"By coming together, the member states will have a strong voice in advancing our interests on the international scene," said South African President Kgalema Motlanthe.

Meanwhile, President Museveni said that it was a step in the right direction for a continent that suffered unfairly when it came to global trade.

President Motlanthe also called for developing countries to have positions within global institutions.

""While Africa and other developing countries had marginal influence over the decisions that have brought the international finance systems to the brink of collapse, unjustifiably, African countries will bear the brunt," he said.

"Development countries must be included in the governance of all international financing institutions to mitigate adverse effects on them," Mr Motlanthe added.

Groupings

The three blocs are already well-established in their own right but cover varying swathes of land and numbers of people.

The SADC was first established as the Southern African Development Coordination Conference in 1980 in order to reduce independence on apartheid South Africa.

It was reincarnated as the SADC in 1992. It covers a population of some 248 million people and a zone whose cumulative GDP is $379bn in 2006.

The SADC's members include South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Comesa was established in 1994 and replaced the Preferential Trade Area. It includes 398 million people and the area has a combined GDP of $286.7bn in 2006. Among its members are Zimbabwe, Zambia, Uganda and Sudan.

EAC is the smallest of the group in terms of GDP, and had a GDP of $46.6bn in 2006. Set up in 1967, disagreements between founding members Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania led to its collapse.

A treaty was signed for its re-establishment in 1999 and the new EAC was formed in 2000.

What is rarely mentioned is the great global heist of Congo's resources

The deadliest war since Adolf Hitler marched across Europe is starting again – and you are almost certainly carrying a blood-soaked chunk of the slaughter in your pocket.

When we glance at the holocaust in Congo, with 5.4 million dead, the clichés of Africa reporting tumble out: this is a "tribal conflict" in "the Heart of Darkness". It isn't. The United Nations investigation found it was a war led by "armies of business" to seize the metals that make our 21st-century society zing and bling. The war in Congo is a war about you.

Every day I think about the people I met in the war zones of eastern Congo when I reported from there. The wards were filled with women who had been gang-raped by the militias and shot in the vagina. The battalions of child soldiers – drugged, dazed 13-year-olds who had been made to kill members of their own families so they couldn't try to escape and go home. But oddly, as I watch the war starting again on CNN, I find myself thinking about a woman I met who had, by Congolese standards, not suffered in extremis.I gave her a lift, and it was only after a few hours of chat along on cratered roads that I noticed there was something strange about Marie-Jean's children. They were slumped forward, their gazes fixed in front of them. They didn't look around, or speak, or smile. "I haven't ever been able to feed them," she said. "Because of the war."

Their brains hadn't developed; they never would now. "Will they get better?" she asked. I left her in a village on the outskirts of Goma, and her kids stumbled after her, expressionless.

There are two stories about how this war began – the official story, and the true story. The official story is that after the Rwandan genocide, the Hutu mass murderers fled across the border into Congo. The Rwandan government chased after them. But it's a lie. How do we know? The Rwandan government didn't go to where the Hutu genocidaires were, at least not at first. They went to where Congo's natural resources were – and began to pillage them. They even told their troops to work with any Hutus they came across. Congo is the richest country in the world for gold, diamonds, coltan, cassiterite, and more. Everybody wanted a slice – so six other countries invaded.

These resources were not being stolen to for use in Africa. They were seized so they could be sold on to us. The more we bought, the more the invaders stole – and slaughtered. The rise of mobile phones caused a surge in deaths, because the coltan they contain is found primarily in Congo. The UN named the international corporations it believed were involved: Anglo-America, Standard Chartered Bank, De Beers and more than 100 others. (They all deny the charges.) But instead of stopping these corporations, our governments demanded that the UN stop criticising them.

There were times when the fighting flagged. In 2003, a peace deal was finally brokered by the UN and the international armies withdrew. Many continued to work via proxy militias – but the carnage waned somewhat. Until now. As with the first war, there is a cover-story, and the truth. A Congolese militia leader called Laurent Nkunda – backed by Rwanda – claims he needs to protect the local Tutsi population from the same Hutu genocidaires who have been hiding out in the jungles of eastern Congo since 1994. That's why he is seizing Congolese military bases and is poised to march on Goma.

It is a lie. François Grignon, Africa Director of the International Crisis Group, tells me the truth: "Nkunda is being funded by Rwandan businessmen so they can retain control of the mines in North Kivu. This is the absolute core of the conflict. What we are seeing now is beneficiaries of the illegal war economy fighting to maintain their right to exploit."

At the moment, Rwandan business interests make a fortune from the mines they illegally seized during the war. The global coltan price has collapsed, so now they focus hungrily on cassiterite, which is used to make tin cans and other consumer disposables. As the war began to wane, they faced losing their control to the elected Congolese government – so they have given it another bloody kick-start.

Yet the debate about Congo in the West – when it exists at all – focuses on our inability to provide a decent bandage, without mentioning that we are causing the wound. It's true the 17,000 UN forces in the country are abysmally failing to protect the civilian population, and urgently need to be super-charged. But it is even more important to stop fuelling the war in the first place by buying blood-soaked natural resources. Nkunda only has enough guns and grenades to take on the Congolese army and the UN because we buy his loot. We need to prosecute the corporations buying them for abetting crimes against humanity, and introduce a global coltan-tax to pay for a substantial peacekeeping force. To get there, we need to build an international system that values the lives of black people more than it values profit.

Somewhere out there – lost in the great global heist of Congo's resources – are Marie-Jean and her children, limping along the road once more, carrying everything they own on their backs. They will probably never use a coltan-filled mobile phone, a cassiterite-smelted can of beans, or a gold necklace – but they may yet die for one.

9 October 2008

For the first time in the history of fiscal probity in Africa's oldest republic, the supreme audit outfit in Liberia, the General Auditing Commission-GAC, has presented its first special Forensic Audit report of the Auditor General to parliament. It is mandated by law to report to the Legislature.liberian presidentIn 2005, an Act of Legislature amended section 53 of the Executive Law of 1972 creating the GAC; making the entity independent of the executive branch of government. This led to the recruitment of the current head of the institution, John S. Morlu II, 2006 by the European Union in alliance with the Liberian government. This was done through a conventional vetting process that saw the participation of other nationals having advertised the job in 150 countries the world over.

The presentation of the audit report on Wednesday to the Lawmakers at the Capitol Building-home of the Lawmakers- in Monrovia, signals a dawn of a new era in the fight against fraud and abuse of public fund in Liberia. Till now, this is the inaugural presentation of an audit report to parliament in the history of the continent’s oldest republic.

The Special Forensic Audit Report of the Auditor General on the Bong Mines Community Escrow Account was received by Genevee Massaquoi, Assistant Secretary of the Senate and the Chief Clerk of the House of Representative, Atty. James Karbah on behalf of the lawmakers.

Thirty one copies of the report were given to the Senate, while the Representative received 65 copies. The Liberia National Legislature, the first branch of government, comprises 96 Legislators, 64 Representatives making up the lower House and 30 Senators.

Making the presentation on behalf of the Auditor General, in separate remarks, GAC head of communication, James Jensen, said “GAC’s unbending commitment in making sure that public monies are truly accounted for the general goods of the public”.

“The proper management and application of public resources, is a cardinal platform of directing more donors funding for Liberia and a truest means for Liberia’s post war economic recovery,” Jensen noted.

He praised international partners like the European Commission, American government plus other partners that have been backbones of support to GAC’s quest to cleanse Liberia from the chain of fiscal improprieties, wastes, corruption and abuse of resources.

He assured the lawmakers that the Auditor General (AG), John S. Morlu II, will in a short period present additional audit reports to members of the legislature.

Both Massaquoi and Chief Clerk Karbah expressed appreciation for the report and promised to present them to the lawmakers. The Special Forensic Audit report of the Bong Mines Community escrow account covers the fiscal year ended 2006/2007.

The former mining town, Bong Mines is situated in Bong County, central Liberia. The audit commissioned by the Auditor General included the audits of financial and related records pertaining to three projects in Fuamah District in Bong County. They included Handii road, rehabilitation of the annex to Handii Clinic and seven classroom school construction and clinic renovation all totaling US$236,693.9.

In a related development: a GAC source said the entity has “completed the audits of several government institutions, including, the National Social Security and Welfare Corporation (NASSCORP); National Housing Authority (NPA), National Lotteries, Independent Human Rights Commission (IHRC); and the Ministry of Finance”.

Oil giant, Royal Dutch Shell Petroleum, will go on trial in the United States on February 9, 2009 for alleged complicity in human rights abuses in the Niger Delta, THISDAY has learnt.

The case entitled Wiwa v. Royal Dutch Shell and Wiwa v Anderson concerns the November 10, 1995 hangings of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other members of the Movement of the Emancipation of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) known as "Ogoni Nine" and the shooting of a woman protesting the bulldozing of her farm by Shell in preparation for a pipeline project.

After several years of litigation, Judge Kimba Wood ruled that the trial would he held next year.

According to documents made available by EarthRights International, one of thecounsel, Shell was engaged in "acts of oppression" against peaceful opposition to the company's environmental damage and human rights abuses in the Ogoni area.

THISDAY gathered that the plaintiff's action was brought under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) and alleges violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act (RICO).

The defendants dismissed the complaints on grounds of lack of personal jurisdiction over Royal Dutch/Shell and lack of subject matter jurisdiction.

According to the defendants, ACTA did not apply to a corporation and the claim was precluded by the political questions and act of state doctrines as well as Nigerian law on corporate liability. They also argued that the case should be heard in the Netherlands or England.

But on September 25, 1998, Judge Wood ruled that personal jurisdiction was appropriate in New York but also ruled that England was a more convenient forum and therefore that the defendant's motion to dismiss should be granted for forum non conveniens (Latin for "inconvenient forum" or "inappropriate forum").

Plaintiffs appealed to the US Court of Appeals for Second Circuit, arguing that a forum non conveniens dismissal would vitiate Congressional intent to allow plaintiffs claims to be heard in US courts.

Defendants cross-appealed the ruling personal jurisdiction. And the Court of Appeal on September 15, 2000 reversed the district court's forum non conveniens dismal, thereby concluding that the US was the proper forum.

The court further upheld the district court's ruling that jurisdiction over the defendants was proper.

EarthRights International is a co-counsel for the plaintiffs together with Judith Brown Chomsky, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Paul Hoffman and Julie Shapiro.

The "Ogoni Nine" were hanged by the government of late military ruler Gen. Sani Abacha after they were found guilty of murder by the military tribunal headed by Justice Ibrahim Auta.

There was a global outcry on what was described as "judicial murder" and outrage heightened against Shell which was accused of collaborating with the military regime to silence environmental activists in the oil-producing region.Last August, another oil giant, Chevron Nigeria Limited, had also lost its bid to halt its trial in United States after exhausting all appeals to stop the company from being tried for the alleged murder of villagers in the Niger Delta region in two separate incidents between 1998 and 1999.

The US District Court Judge in San Francisco, California, Susan Illston, had ruled last year in the Bowoto v. Chevron Corp., No 99-2506, that Chevron was directly involved in the alleged attacks by acting in consonance with Nigerian government security forces and therefore would stand trail.

In her ruling, Judge Illston found "evidence that CNL [Chevron Nigeria Limited] personnel were directly involved in the attacks; CNL transported the GSF [Nigerian government security forces], CNL paid the GSF; and CNL knew that GSF were prone to use excessive force".

The plaintiffs are also taking action on the legality of the Nigerian government's conduct at Parabe and Opia/Ikenyan, asking the state court to issue an injunction regulating the manner in which the Nigerian government may provide law enforcement services in Nigeria, and asking the court to limit CNL's ability to obtain armed protection in Nigeria.Chevron argued this will hinder its operations in the country.

In addition to Environmental Rights Action and Traber &Voorhees, the plaintiffs are represented by the private law firms of Hadsell & Stormer and Siegel & Yee, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Paul Hoffman, Michael Sorgen, Robert Newman, Anthony DiCaprio, Elizabeth Gu-arnieri, and Richard Wiebe.

In efforts to make quick and symbolic gains in Europe's otherwise failed policies to curb climate gas emissions, environmental and anti-globalisation politicians are aiming at Africa's few economic success stories. Campaigns to buy locally produced food and travel to local destinations particularly hit out against African products.

Consumers in Europe are again growing more environmentally conscious and are willing to use their purchasing power to assist in what is widely seen as our era's most pressing problems - the overspending of energy and global warming. Meanwhile, European politicians have been those pressuring strongest to gain support for the Kyoto Protocol while having totally failed to lower emissions of climate gases in their own countries. In every country, emissions have steadily increased.

Populist solutions that are to satisfy costumers, politicians and the European industry alike are therefore surfacing all over Africa's neighbour continent and the main market of its products. And the solutions seem neat and nice - easy to understand and with the potential of creating more work locally. Even the industry starts propagating these solutions.

The victim mainly is Africa, because the message is that, as longer as a product or person is transported, the more energy is wasted unnecessarily. Worst of all is airborne transport, having the highest emissions of climate gases such as CO2. Unluckily, Africa is far away from European markets and poor transcontinental infrastructure puts most products and travellers on an airplane.

All over Europe, therefore, home-grown campaigns are being promoted, attacking Africa's newest and most successful export products. Anti-globalisation activists, "green" politicians, local industry and even occasional experts and scientists head these "buy local" campaigns.

One of the latest campaigns is being launched in Germany, Europe's most populous state and biggest single market. The campaign goes "Sylt instead of Seychelles", referring to a fragile German North Sea island with an overstretched and environmentally damaging tourism industry. Tourism and climate expert Dr Manfred Stock developed the slogan and told the daily newspaper 'Berliner Zeitung' that consumers worrying about global warming should avoid intercontinental flights and rather take the train to a German or European destination.

The much-quoted researcher is in line with policies promoted by Germany's Federal Environment Agency (UBA). UBA President Dr Andreas Troge has made the climate change issue his agency's foremost focus, and one of the ways consumers could "do something on your own" is by changing their travel behaviour, UBA says. A single traveller flying to an intercontinental destination produces more than five tonnes of CO2, he told the German press, while someone travelling by train within Germany only had the emission of ten of kilograms of CO2 to account for.

Some even go further and have started penalising air travellers. In Norway, flyers have started paying for their CO2 emissions. So far, only domestic flights are penalised to make sure Norwegian airliners are not losing out in competition with other companies on international flights. But Norway is among many countries working for a CO2 tax on world-wide flights, which of course in particular would make long distance flights much more expensive.

This comes as most African states are investing massively in their nascent tourism industry and as Africa is surfacing as a modern and exciting travel destination in most Western markets. Some sub-Saharan states, in particular Seychelles, Mauritius, Cape Verde and The Gambia, already see tourism as their greatest foreign exchange earners. In Kenya, Tanzania, Senegal, Namibia, Botswana and South Africa, the travel industry by now is a vibrant success, while newcomers as Mozambique, Ethiopia, Gabon and Burkina Faso pin great investments and development hopes to the industry. Read on;

The Nation (Kenya), by Charles Onyango-Abbo - October 9, 2008.Nairobi (Kenya) - “Victor Matioli’s organic pumpkins are plump, his coriander aromatic, and his spinach ‘very soft, sweet, and tasty’.This story appeared in the British newspaper, The Guardian. You will be very surprised where it came from: Kibera slum in Nairobi.

This half-acre farm is a former rubbish dump… “So arresting is the sight of tall sunflowers… Matioli and his fellow growers have had to put up a ‘No Photographing’ sign to allow them to work in peace. Their reputations — the farmers are all reformed criminals — mean the warning is rarely seldom ignored.”

Kibera’s first organic farm was born out of a national disaster — the post-election violence. It needed Matioli on one side, and the worthy Su Kahumbu, managing director of Green Dreams, one of the country’s organic produce farms, on the other. Ms Kahumbu feared that the country would be ravaged by a famine, and she wanted to organise mass distribution of seeds to small-scale farmers in the Rift Valley so they could plant before the April rains. But she couldn’t find money for the project.

A friend told her about a group of young, unemployed men in Kibera who wanted to learn how to farm — and to do it right there in the slum. Kahumbu thought the idea was crazy. But the energy and optimism of Matioli’s 36-member Youth Reform Group eventually won her over.

This story might have appeared in the local media, but I definitely missed it. It raises a question about why, despite criticism that the Western media usually gives Africa a bad rap, they tend to beat us to quite a few feel-good stories about the continent.

Last year, the Hollywood makers of one of the most successful animated TV series, The Simpsons, ordered a large consignment of stone models of the characters from stone carvers in western Kenya. We found out about it in the Western press.

Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama, who has a good shot at becoming America’s first black president, first came to the attention of the world with a rousing speech in 2004 at his party’s convention. Keen observers said at that point that “one day, this young man will be US president.”

It took another two years, just before he visited and well after the American press had run the story of his family in Nyanza, for Kenya’s media to pick it up.

A colleague likes to tell a story about how, after the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, Daily Nation went to interview the families of the suspected bombers for their profiles, and to get their photographs.

They found that some chap from The Washington Post had beaten them to the punch days earlier, bought off all the best pictures, and left the dregs for the local press.

We are beaten, not because we are indifferent, lazy, or out of touch. It’s just that when you live in a place too long, it loses its novelty and even the most dramatic of events can sometimes just be part of the local furniture.

It was like covering the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 in which nearly one million people were slaughtered. It would be quite unnerving to sit back and watch ourselves at work. However, after the first few days of horror at the bodies littering every place you looked, you got used to it and it became normal to step over — and on — bodies as you walked through the church to see how many more were hidden behind the altar where they had been killed.

At the height of the rebellion by the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army in northern Uganda, in the evening, thousands of people would flee the villages with their mattresses and pots to spend the night on the streets, in churches, and hospital grounds of the nearest major town, Gulu that was heavily defended by the army.

It was both a heart-wrenching and awesome sight, watching the long files they formed against the sunset and sunrise when they trooped back to the villages. Gulu-based correspondents who had lived in the war zone for a long time and gone through every imaginable test, didn’t think this massive to-and-fro movement by the villagers was a story, and they never wrote it.

Then Kampala-based journalists went to the conflict area, and the story grew wings. Nearly every major international newspaper, magazine and news TV descended upon the region, and for the better part of eight years, no matter where you lived in the world, you couldn’t escape the “amazing” story of the northern Uganda night exodus.

So, indeed, as the Luhyas say, the one who lives by the river dies of thirst.The Nation (Kenya), by Charles Onyango-Abbo - October 9, 2008.Nairobi (Kenya) - “Victor Matioli’s organic pumpkins are plump, his coriander aromatic, and his spinach ‘very soft, sweet, and tasty’.This story appeared in the British newspaper, The Guardian. You will be very surprised where it came from: Kibera slum in Nairobi.

This half-acre farm is a former rubbish dump… “So arresting is the sight of tall sunflowers… Matioli and his fellow growers have had to put up a ‘No Photographing’ sign to allow them to work in peace. Their reputations — the farmers are all reformed criminals — mean the warning is rarely seldom ignored.”

Kibera’s first organic farm was born out of a national disaster — the post-election violence. It needed Matioli on one side, and the worthy Su Kahumbu, managing director of Green Dreams, one of the country’s organic produce farms, on the other. Ms Kahumbu feared that the country would be ravaged by a famine, and she wanted to organise mass distribution of seeds to small-scale farmers in the Rift Valley so they could plant before the April rains. But she couldn’t find money for the project.

A friend told her about a group of young, unemployed men in Kibera who wanted to learn how to farm — and to do it right there in the slum. Kahumbu thought the idea was crazy. But the energy and optimism of Matioli’s 36-member Youth Reform Group eventually won her over.

This story might have appeared in the local media, but I definitely missed it. It raises a question about why, despite criticism that the Western media usually gives Africa a bad rap, they tend to beat us to quite a few feel-good stories about the continent.

Last year, the Hollywood makers of one of the most successful animated TV series, The Simpsons, ordered a large consignment of stone models of the characters from stone carvers in western Kenya. We found out about it in the Western press.

Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama, who has a good shot at becoming America’s first black president, first came to the attention of the world with a rousing speech in 2004 at his party’s convention. Keen observers said at that point that “one day, this young man will be US president.”

It took another two years, just before he visited and well after the American press had run the story of his family in Nyanza, for Kenya’s media to pick it up.

A colleague likes to tell a story about how, after the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, Daily Nation went to interview the families of the suspected bombers for their profiles, and to get their photographs.

They found that some chap from The Washington Post had beaten them to the punch days earlier, bought off all the best pictures, and left the dregs for the local press.

We are beaten, not because we are indifferent, lazy, or out of touch. It’s just that when you live in a place too long, it loses its novelty and even the most dramatic of events can sometimes just be part of the local furniture.

It was like covering the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 in which nearly one million people were slaughtered. It would be quite unnerving to sit back and watch ourselves at work. However, after the first few days of horror at the bodies littering every place you looked, you got used to it and it became normal to step over — and on — bodies as you walked through the church to see how many more were hidden behind the altar where they had been killed.

At the height of the rebellion by the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army in northern Uganda, in the evening, thousands of people would flee the villages with their mattresses and pots to spend the night on the streets, in churches, and hospital grounds of the nearest major town, Gulu that was heavily defended by the army.

It was both a heart-wrenching and awesome sight, watching the long files they formed against the sunset and sunrise when they trooped back to the villages. Gulu-based correspondents who had lived in the war zone for a long time and gone through every imaginable test, didn’t think this massive to-and-fro movement by the villagers was a story, and they never wrote it.

Then Kampala-based journalists went to the conflict area, and the story grew wings. Nearly every major international newspaper, magazine and news TV descended upon the region, and for the better part of eight years, no matter where you lived in the world, you couldn’t escape the “amazing” story of the northern Uganda night exodus.

So, indeed, as the Luhyas say, the one who lives by the river dies of thirst.